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Defendant Klaus-Dieter F. (2nd from left) with his lawyer in the district court of Kiel: The house is secured with sirens
Photo: Axel Heimken / picture alliance / dpa
Klaus-Dieter F.'s property is likely to be in one of the most beautiful places in Schleswig-Holstein.
On the east bank of the Kiel Fjord, surrounded by trees, at a great distance from the neighbors.
Without causing a stir, the millionaire was able to set up a kind of guide bunker in his villa in Heikendorf.
And yet the residents were probably not really surprised when in July 2015 Bundeswehr soldiers pulled a Wehrmacht tank from the underground car park.
His penchant for Nazi devotional objects was not hidden from those around him.
Many years ago, in the winter disaster of 1978, he had cleared the private road around his property with a tank.
Before the district court in Kiel it is now about the unauthorized possession of the 2015 World War I tank of the brand »Panther« - and whether it was still functional and falls under the War Weapons Control Act.
Disguised safe
Klaus-Dieter F., now 84 years old, is charged with violating the War Weapons Control Act and other violations of the law on weapons. Also topics in the process are: the 8.8-centimeter anti-aircraft gun, the G7A torpedo, the »5 cm grenade launcher 36« type, machine guns, assault rifles and rocket rifles, semi-automatic and fully automatic pistols and more than 1000 rounds of ammunition, which investigators found in F's villa. Some of them were in a camouflaged safe, and the house was secured with an electrical system and sirens.
An employee of the Plön District Public Order Office was there in July 2015 when the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) inspected Defendant F.'s villa in the early hours of the morning.
At that time he checked the 65 weapons that F. had registered in the 1970s: Are all of them available, are they safely stored?
That was the case, says the administrative clerk as a witness in court.
However, numerous weapons were taken by the LKA for investigations - including two fully automatic weapons of the Mauser C96 type that F. had forbidden because they were weapons of war.
F. is the owner of a so-called green gun ownership card, which entitles him, as a collector, to keep guns from an "old possession", but not ammunition.
He is also forbidden to shoot with it.
The clerk speaks of a "weapons room" in the basement of the villa, which was registered as such with his authority.
He, too, was apparently surprised that the LKA officers discovered a machine gun and ammunition that summer day and promptly took them away.
The 7th major criminal chamber, chaired by Stephan Worpenberg, has to clarify whether Wehrmacht tanks, flak and mortars could still be used and fall under the War Weapons Control Act - or whether F. had ensured that weapons were demilitarized.
According to various reports, the court apparently only regards the anti-aircraft gun as a weapon of war.
Public prosecutor Thorsten Wolke, on the other hand, also classifies tanks and other weapons as such.
Violations of the War Weapons Control Act are punishable by a minimum of one year and a maximum of five years in prison.
"Everything is very impressive"
Why did a pensioner build a kind of driver's bunker?
Why did he hoard tons of Nazi devotional items, including dozens of mannequins dressed in uniforms from the "Third Reich"?
And lamps in the form of SS runes?
That doesn't matter in this process.
Mr. F.'s passion for collecting is not punishable.
But a gentleman from southern Germany, who has a similar passion as F., suggests a possible answer. On this third day of the trial, he was summoned as a witness because in 2003 he gave F. the 8.8-centimeter anti-aircraft gun in exchange for a lighter gun. For the fact that the cannon survived the Second World War, it was in "good condition," says the man from Breisgau. He did not demilitarize her, he simply assumed that she could no longer shoot. A bolt was pressed into the tube.
He got to know F. through a friend. When he was once in Laboe, he made an appointment with F. and visited him in his villa in Heikendorf. The man remembers a “beautiful house in the bay”, “everything is very imposing” and “full of antiques”. "He was very proud of this tank," says the witness, connected via video, about the defendant. F. started the engine at that time. "You could tell the man is happy that he has a tank."